Wednesday, January 02, 2008

An ode to progressive education.

Who can compete with all that fun as educators prepare the young for their world? See the kiddies happily dancing into the world of tomorrow. However, how sawing wood and pushing toy trucks around can help you learn math or history is not explained.

Meet Kilpatrick, Bagley (a critic of progressive education) and Dewey himself. I think this video is from the 40s.

2 comments:

Fascinating. There really is nothing new under the sun. Wonder if the present futurists would recognize their own impressive-sounding (but ultimately shallow) educationese coming out of the mouths of the past futurists of the 1940's. I have to admit to sawing some wood in a few of my history classes, but I am pretty sure that I didn't learn much on those days.

Video calls to mind a 1940's newsreel on the Simpsons about their hometown of Springfield. In the newsreel, they show a factory cranking out "aqua cars," which the nasally 40's sounding narrator pronounces "the car of the future" or some such thing. Narrator: "Keep em coming, boys!"

Funny joke regarding cars on a cartoon show. Not so funny when you think of kids in classrooms and years wasted on voodoo education.